When her daughters grew up and moved out, Los Angeles decorator Sasha Emerson downsized to a traditional cottage—without sacrificing one lick of her funky flea-market chic.

The Next Chapter

The Next Chapter

A few years ago, Sasha Emerson found herself at a turning point. Two of her daughters had just left for college; the third, a teenager, already had one foot out the door. Wandering the halls of the family's sprawling Los Angeles home, situated in the wilds of Rustic Canyon, Emerson was struck by something disconcerting: For the first time in nearly 17 years, the place was quiet.

"A house can symbolize big changes in your heart," she says. The interior designer's heart was telling her to reboot and downsize—to an English-style cottage in L.A.'s stately Hancock Park neighborhood.

In this photo: Orange mohair revives a vintage maple stool in the kitchen, where Carrara marble upgrades Ikea cabinets. Task lighting comes in the form of suspended Edison bulbs, covered with Victorian wire shades. The cast-aluminum fox wine cooler was designed by Arthur Court.

Kitchen

Kitchen

With dark oak floors, French doors, and a gabled brick exterior, the cozy 1922 home couldn't have been more different from the expansive midcentury modern cube Emerson was leaving behind. And that's exactly what inspired her.

First, though, she needed to get rid of a lot of stuff.Faced with enough furniture to fill 4,500 square feet—yet only half that much space—Emerson enlisted friends to help edit her belongings. "It was fun," she remembers, "like trying on clothes. 'Should I leave off the scarf? Lose the jewelry?' I wanted less clutter, more precision."

In this photo: Emerson framed a 1960s supermarket ad as a cheeky homage to Andy Warhol's soup can. The ceramic canisters are from the same period. The wall is painted Coventry Gray by Benjamin Moore.